The following United States patents comprise the closest known prior art:
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Most public telephones are displayed for public use in telephone booths or telephone stands, the latter being generally characterized as having no enclosure to surround the user of the telephone. Indeed, it appears that telephone stands are being used increasingly to display public telephones, as they are far less expensive than telephone booths.
There has been a trend in recent years toward an increase in vandalism perpetrated on public telephones. Some of the vandalism appears to express an increasing public antagonism toward the telephone monopoly, but most of the vandalism appears to be carried out in the act of burglarizing the pay telephone to obtain the contents of the coin box. Generally speaking, these acts of vandalism are carried out when as few witnesses as possible are nearby; for example, during late evening and early morning hours when few persons are about.
There are known in the prior art various protective enclosures for telephonic communications equipment, many of them being associated with police or fire fighting communications. These enclosures are generally expensive to fabricate, and are not well suited for displaying public pay telephones. Indeed, secure prior art enclosures are far too expensive to be used widely for public telephones.